A multi-million dollar independent company that provides water that rates among the cleanest, safest and healthiest in the world, provides water and sanitation services to over 3 million people daily by way of nearly 11 000 kilometers of distribution pipes that delivers water to 33 water towers, 87 reservoirs and pump stations 24 hours a day.
Their reservoirs are measured and monitored by Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and historically, system operators and management would receive a stream of numbers and alerts when alarms were triggered. They would have to send out emergency shutdown notifications, down tools and manually open and close pumps to ensure that sufficient water was delivered to their customer base. The result is that they were reacting to daily crisis management, as opposed to service delivery through a more effective, planned, proactive and controlled approach to their business.
To ensure they would meet service delivery and best business practices while minimising downtime to providing uninterrupted services and improved customer satisfaction, they implemented Affectli to make them more efficient in monitoring and managing water levels in their most critical reservoir tanks.
The client´s IoT endpoints and assets were integrated into the Affectli platform to give them an overview of their business in real-time using GIS and geo-reporting tools. Within the Situational Awareness feature of Affectli, icons representing the client’s assets change colour when a fault occurs or an alarm is triggered, making it easier for them to identify and address problems as and when they arise.
When alarms are triggered, a ticket is generated for the relevant field operator. With Affectli supporting an agile environment, this feature also provides for contextual collaboration on all tasks, ensuring that the right people get the right information at the right time, as well as provides historical data and a full audit trail.
Having applied calculations to historical data received from signals and alarms, we were able to establish a predictive pattern of when a reservoir would be empty based on the rate of consumption. We then applied a rule to notify the client 3 hours ahead of time that the reservoir would be reaching critically low levels, providing them the tools for a proactive approach to avoid unnecessary service interruptions and emergency shutdowns.
The next step was to include a summary of all the water levels within the reservoirs. This was published every 2 hours to their mobile devices, giving them an accurate overview of water level readings of their reservoirs.
Before the implementation of Affectli, our client was reporting 5 to 6 low level alarms daily on their critical tanks, with the average level of those reservoirs being low, and marginally above empty. Within 8 days, this was reduced to only one low level alarm.
By implementing an effective Digital Transformation solution like Affectli that is agile and scalable, as well as device and system agnostic, it provides an organisation with smart technology and connected systems that are the very foundation for business efficiency.
